At the beginning of Nicholas Carr’s book: The shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains, he mentions that how a super computer named HAL was destroyed in the early years of 2001. In this case, he is referring to the fact that our minds know that they are being destroyed and they can do nothing about it. He goes ahead to mention that our internet is doing this by distracting us every chance it gets. Carr presents the idea that the presence of links on the internet is distracting people. He also questions the use of Google as a source of information. To him, Google is a company that instead of providing us with information, pages associated with Google have many links. This in turn means there are more distractions that one would find on an average book. To Carr, our minds are only capable of handling one single source of information at a time (Carr, 2010).
He describes this by saying that we have two kinds of memory: The working memory and the storage memory. When we overload our brains with information that is unnecessary in the form of a million and one link on a webpage, it then pulls the rug under our minds capability to store information for the long term. Carr goes ahead to cite a report that showed people who watched the news with less information moving at the bottom of the screen had the ability to store more information-compared people watching news with a moving bar with more information at the bottom of the screen. What Carr is implying is that the internet is not helping us. In fact, he actually implies that the internet is actually causing more harm than helping us. He goes ahead to point out that “this era is unlikely to produce Albert Einstein’s or any other great inventors.”
Back to what Carr pointed out, that the internet seems to be destroying our concentration span, this seems to be his greatest worry of them all. He compares the internet to a forest. He says that we are always jumping from one website to another in the search of information. We tend not to be specific in what we research. To him, in many ways humanity is not improving to become a better species. This method of jumping from Twitter, to Facebook, and to other blogging websites is just like what our ancestors did. According to Carr, this is similar to hunting and gathering. We are evolving backwards. This is a theory that many people, may sound like that of an activist who is rather apprehensive of technology and specifically to the use of internet (Carr, 2010).
All the while, Carr is only talking about the negative effects of the internet to our brains. He fails to mention the fact that there have been studies that have clearly showed that the internet is actually improving our thinking capacity. These studies suggest that it is the need to access many links on the internet at the same time the makes us even smarter. We end up having the need to use a part of our brains that is rarely used. This part of our brain is usually active only when we need to work on complex issues. Looking at this issue from this angle, we therefore can conclude that Google is actually making us smarter. This is by putting this part of our brain to exercise.
It is important to note however that the introduction of the internet does have its own negativities. Just like the time of Socrates, when books were introduced, some characters were very much against it declaring that we were no longer using our minds, body and soul to put into remembrance the information passed down from generation to generation.
According to Carr, there is a high chance the ADD will increase in the people of this generation. He says when people rely too much on the internet, they stop being critical thinkers. They take what is available on the internet as the biblical truth. More and more people are basing their research from the internet. This again means that more and more people are citing information that has most of the time not been approved. They go ahead to use this information as facts with which to base their arguments. According to Carr, this is what he calls group mentality. It is thinking like this that puts the current generation at the danger of losing quality information that came from books that were highly available in the library (Carr, 2010).
Many critics however do not support the school of thought that Carr is representing. They think that Carr is actually overstretching the truth. Some of them think that the internet is like any other tool, if you use it appropriately, it will serve you well, but if you abuse it, it will throw you into an abyss of uncertainty full of irrelevant information. They think that Carr is a fanatic. We should however hold to that thought should be critical about it. This is because no one else has tried covering the internet and its side effects to our brains the way car did. This has opened up our minds to see far more than we could have thought to be true.
Currently, the dependence to using our electronic devices in our day to day activities is increasing. This is mostly visible in or youth who are using the social networking websites on an hourly basis. A young man will be staring at his phone from time to time to check up on the updates that his friends have posted on Facebook. Again, with reference to twitter, we realize that it has been a tool for the liberation of many countries from the oppressive rule of certain leaders. This is the positive side of it, but the truth is that it is also forming a big form of distraction to the people using it. The internet is becoming a form of drug to our minds that require us to be actively access the internet any chance we get. Carr’s opinions open our mind to think on our own activities on the internet. As to whether the information he provides is true or false, it is all up to the reader to decipher for himself. This is because never mentions how to solve this issue that he has so diligently pointed out, he just goes out of his way to point out the flaws of the internet and provide his own suggestions as to what he thinks is proof. The internet is here to stay, my suggestion is we adapt, rather than ignore and be left behind by this new technology.
Work Cited:
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." Nation New York. 292.14 (2011): 27-28. Print.
"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." Contemporary Sociology. 40.6 (2011): 772-774. Print.
